Israel Advocates Are Afraid of Losing Bipartisan Support in the U.S. – The New York Times

Israel’s stance, he said, has made his task harder: “In our hyperpartisan world, the friend of my enemy is my enemy, and to the extent that Democrats look at Trump as the enemy, if they see Israel and the Netanyahu administration as operating hand in glove, that gives them real pause.”

Mr. Netanyahu has long made clear his affinity for the Republican Party. His relations with former President Barack Obama were famously strained — so much so that 2015, in a rare breach of protocol, he circumvented the White House in accepting an invitation to address the Republican-led Congress. Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the Democratic leader, called the address an “insult” to the United States and dozens of Democrats skipped it.

With Mr. Trump in office, the Netanyahu-Republican alliance has strengthened, generating fears that bipartisan American support for Israel — a cornerstone of relations between the two countries since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 — will erode.

Those fears are so real that even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful and assiduously bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group known as AIPAC, has split with the Netanyahu government on its decision. AIPAC typically backs Israel no matter who is in power, but its view is that while presidents and prime ministers come and go, support for Israel in Congress is essential.